Millie and the Cactus (8/25)

Sunday, September 07, 2014
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This week has been chock-full of spiritual growth and interesting people: one of my favorite kinds of weeks!

We've been busier than little worker ants (like Lisa enjoys calling us) trying to find more people to teach. It's a little bit harder than some areas in a place like southern California, where the people are generally middle-class and complacent with their lives.

Still, we're working on it. We've been visiting a lot of former investigators this week, and that always calls for a lot of adventures. One such adventure was with a woman named Millie. She lives in a small stucco house with a dirt yard that looked like it was imported straight from Mexico. Her pitbull's name is Chula and she's been studying with the Jehovah's Witnesses for a while now. When we talked to her about the gospel she wasn't interested, but we found out that she was trying to deliver a cactus to her neighbor, a family in our ward.

That's how we found ourselves wheeling a cactus across the desert to Millie's neighbor; Sister C was wheeling the cactus, and I was driving behind her in the car, using the headlights to illuminate her path. The coyotes were howling in the background, sounding like a pack of banshees straight from the pits of Hell. (I hate coyotes.)

We made it safely to the house, dropped off our cactus, and were on our way again, dropping off the dolly back at Millie's house.

Our adventure with a cactus!

It's moments like that, more than anything, that make mission life awesome. Although Millie might not be interested in learning more about the church right now, being able to serve her was a much-needed adventure and blessing for us, and hopefully showed her that the Mormon missionaries are good to have around.

I love you all, and thank you so much for your support on this awfully big adventure of mine. Being a missionary is mostly hard, it's true, but it's the small moments of success and joy that make all of the stretching and breaking worth it.

Hanging out with the catz.

Have a FABULOUS week! Enjoy your return to autumn! California, I'm afraid, will still feel like summer, just as it has for the entire time I've been here, basically. :)